Each winner of the 1987 Governor General's Awards for Literary Merit received $5000 and a medal from the Governor General of Canada.
The winners and nominees were selected by a panel of judges administered by the Canada Council for the Arts.
The Governor General's Awards for Literary Merit nominally increased in number from 8 in 1986 to 14 in 1987, with the addition of four awards for children's book writing and illustration and two awards for translation.
[1] The four Children's Literature awards, however, were simply the four annual Canada Council Children's Literature Prizes (1975 to 1986) under a new name.
[2]